On The Trail Of Gasparilla`s Treasure Haunted By The Ghost Of Notorious Pirate Jose Gaspar, Treasure Hunter Rick Vaughan Refuses To Abandon A Search For Gold That Has Already Cost Him A King`s Ransom.

October 11, 1992|BY BILL BELLEVILLE

COMMERCIAL SALVOR RICK Vaughan seems like a character sent from Central Casting to enliven the workaday realities the rest of us must endure. It`s not just that Vaughan is still chasing a childhood dream of buccaneers and buried treasure. It`s that he`s so close to his dream he can taste it. If you listen long enough, he can make you taste it too.

``We`re making history down here,`` says Vaughan, lighting up an unfiltered Camel in his homey bungalow no more than a sword swipe from the water`s edge of Charlotte Harbor on Florida`s Gulf Coast. ``We`ve got three piles of silver -- about 10 tons worth of bullion. We`ve got a wooden deck of a pirate ship that`s still intact. We`ve got infrared photos that will blow your mind.``

What`s more, Vaughan`s got the maps, the ``hits`` -- indications of large piles of metal -- from the proton magnetometer, the aerial photos, the green parrot on the shoulder, the tattoo on the bicep. With a lifetime of salvage experience dating back to the early `70s, when he found the very first gold bar from the Nuestra Senora de Atocha off Key West, Vaughan could be edging up to western civilization`s most stunning underwater treasure discovery to date.

If he has what he says he has, he`ll turn the early Spanish colonial history of Florida on its ear and walk away with 10 tons of silver bullion in the bargain.

Then again, he could lose his shirt, get thrown in jail, and find himself -- at early middle age -- the walking embodiment of Jimmy Buffett`s displaced pirate, living in a time when the cannons don`t thunder and there`s nothing to plunder. Just an over-40 victim of fate.

SHALLOW AND UNMISTAKABLY healthy, Charlotte Harbor is a broad inland bay wedged into the west side of the Florida peninsula just above the Everglades. Rimmed with retirement communities, it`s best known for migratory schools of giant tarpon that visit each spring, shooting through the narrow cut of Boca Grande Pass.

Local legend would also have us believe that flotillas of buccaneers used the same pass to ambush Spanish galleons or flee the wrath of an angry Crown. Early maps locating ``Gaspar Island`` and ``Gasparilla Sound`` spawned modern stories depicting a notorious pirate, Jose Gaspar, as a womanizing, hard- drinking, nautical thief who reigned for 40 years -- by all accounts, a pirate`s pirate. If such a man was here, the theory goes, he was bound to have stashed away treasure worth billions at today`s prices.

Jose Gaspar has come in handy for parades and celebrations. The city of Tampa hosts a Gasparilla Day each year. And he`s fueled a cottage industry of treasure-hunting books, guides and metal-detecting gear. But the Gaspar legend has been far more vexing to historians.

Brushed by the main current of the Gulf Stream, Florida`s east coast was the marine superhighway used by Spanish treasure galleons to jump-start their long trek back to the warehouses of Seville. Most authorities feel the state`s west coast was only a bit player in the treasure drama.

Noted historians such as Dr. Eugene Lyon, who helped steer Mel Fisher to the Atocha, believe pirates did infest the natural Gulf harbors from the late 17th to early 19th centuries. But as Lyon points out, they were thought to be mostly ``small-bore pirates`` who plundered local fishing villages and merchant ships.

Early on, the region saw a spate of Spanish explorers but then evolved into a maritime backwater too far outside the mainstream to interest the big-league buccaneers.

In this more sober reality, Jose Gaspar was not a pirate at all but an obscure Spanish cleric attached to one of southwest Florida`s Catholic missions. The Gasparilla stories, say historians, were patched together by chamber of commerce types and newspaper reporters, based on tales a fishing guide told to amuse his clients earlier in this century.

Nonetheless, the Spanish colonial history of Charlotte Harbor is rich. Ponce de Leon -- searching for gold, not a fountain of youth -- landed here in 1513. Hernando de Soto, discoverer of the Mississippi River, made landfall in 1539 and spent four years hunting for gold. Next came Pedro Menendez de Aviles, fresh from founding St. Augustine, who built the legendary fortress of San Antonio.

To the true believers, this is a sign. With all this conquistadoring going on, there surely must be treasure squirreled away somewhere. And Rick Vaughan is a believer. In fact, he`s so sure that he`s cashed in his share of the booty from the Atocha -- about a quarter-million dollars worth -- and sunk every penny into his quest to uncover the mystery of Charlotte Harbor.

``There`s so much here, it`s phenomenal,`` says Vaughan, who somehow manages to seem calm and dispassionate while spinning tales rich with high drama. ``We`re going to do for Charlotte Harbor what Mel Fisher did for Key West.`` And then: ``I`m either going to prove or disprove Gaspar was here.``